Goldman: The Results Speak for Themselves

The Lowell SunFebruary 11, 2019

By Michael Goldman

Truer words were never spoken by any presidential press secretary regarding any president than when Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently uttered the phrase about Donald J Trump that will surely be etched on his tombstone.

“The results,” Sanders said, “speak for themselves.”

Sadly for Trump, her words hit the nail on the head.

According to a plethora of new, non-partisan independent surveys, Trump’s performance over the past two years speak for themselves in the polling numbers they now generate, which reveal him to be the least popular, least respected president ever at this point in his presidency.

To be fair, Trump did say when he ran for president that his ultimate goal was to bring our divided nation together again.

Given that majorities of virtually every major and minor subset of voters (with the sole exception of hard core Republicans) agree that Trump has been an abject failure, in a backdoor sort of way, he has achieved his goal.

Meanwhile, I think I know exactly what Trump was thinking when he heard the words “The results speak for themselves” tumble out of his beleaguered spokesman’s mouth.

“Damn,” he surely thought, “whose side is Sarah Huckabee Sanders on anyway?”

Seems even our often delusional commander-in-chief understood the gales of laughter and derision which would follow Sanders’ now infamous retort.

In case you missed it, the words were in fact said to the media in response to the brutal leaking of Trump’s super-secret “non-work” schedules, which confirmed what most of us, in our gut, assumed all along: this president will never will never be confused with any worker-bees you may know.

According to the released schedules, it seems 60 percent plus of our current chief executives time in the White House has been spent just as one might suspect it to be spent by any 70-plus-year-old Florida retiree, which means one gets up late; lounges around for half the morning; forgets where they put their reading glasses; peruses the sport sections of the daily papers; grabs a couple of hours of some TV time; settles in for a mid-day nap; and, of course, ends the day calling old pals to schmooze about days gone by.

The problem for Trump, of course, is that he’s not a 70-plus-year-old Florida retiree.

He’s our president.

Not surprisingly, American’s assumed the person tasked with that particular job assume they would work a minimum of time and a half, but more likely double time.

Wrong. Turns out this chief executive thinks half time is enough time.

Then again, this revelation does seem to solve certain mysteries.

Could Trump’s part time schedule be the reason why he recently mispronounced the names of the countries of Nepal and Bhutan as “nipple” and “button” and then went on to incorrectly state to a group of national security experts that both “nipple” and “button” were part of India?

Neither are.

Could his part time schedule be the reason why Trump can’t seem to get nominated or confirmed dozens of cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, trade representatives, or judges?

Could his part time schedule be the reason why Trump has ended up worsening our long-standing relationships with allies such as NATO, France, Germany, Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, and England, instead of strengthening them?

Could his part time schedule be the reason why Trump didn’t comprehend the huge vat of sewerage he’d tumble into when he claimed as he did last year that there were “good people on both sides” of the racist Charlottesville march?

Could his part time schedule be the reason why Trump has allowed our air to become more toxic, our water to become more polluted, and our EPA become more industry-friendly than ever before?

Could his part time schedule be the reason why Trump fixates on caravans of unarmed immigrants rather than on our nation’s opioid epidemic?

Now, to be fair, as dumb as the Huckabee Sanders statement was, it still wasn’t as dumb as Trump’s own recent bizarre utterance.

The president’s words?

“You can’t impeach someone after two years who is doing the best job ever done by any president in history.”

To which, of course, I reply: “Those results, my friends, speak for themselves.”

Michael Goldman is a paid political consultant for Democratic candidates and president of Goldman Associates in Boston. He is a frequent contributor to this newspaper.